1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus such as a portable personal computer equipped with, e.g., a touch pad pointing device.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, there are developed various notebook or laptop portable personal computers. These types of portable personal computers are provided with various functions in order to assure improvement of the operationality.
An example of these functions is a pointing device for the portable computer as a replacement for a mouse. For example, the input unit pointing device disclosed in Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKAI Publication No. 8-44493 is widely used as such type of pointing device. It is possible to give various commands to the computer by tapping tap zones on this touch pad. For example, the computer can be provided with commands for changing the speed of the mouse pointer indicated on a computer display device, defining the setup of above-mentioned tap zones, etc.
A utility for changing the mouse pointer speed is activated from the pointing device. In order to set the mouse pointer speed, a user calls a mouse setup screen, displays a pointer speed setup screen, and operates a slide bar on the screen. When the mouse pointer has been set to the slowest speed, however, the user needs to perform the whole operation using the slowest mouse pointer, degrading the operationality.
The user needs to display a tap zone confirmation screen in the display screen on the display device each time he or she wishes to confirm the defined tap zone function. It has been difficult to confirm the defined function.
The prior art requires much time and labor for various settings and operations on the computer's setup and operation screens, causing problems of operationality and workability.